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ADDRESS 



SEVENTH SESSION 



.l^meritan §0rticultiiral ^otittj 



HELD IN CLEVELAND, OHIO 



SEPTEMBER 7, 8, 9, 10, 1886. 



By PARKER EARLE, 



PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY. 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY 

BY 

LEAVENWORTH & BURR PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

DETROIT, MICH. 
1886. 



ADDRESS 



SEVENTH SESSION 



l^meritaii porticEltural mdtti 



HELD IN CLEVELAND, OHIO 



SEPTEMBER 7, 8. 9, 10. 1886, 



By PARKER EARLE, 



PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY. 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY 

BY 

LEAVENWORTH & BURR PUBLISHING COMPANY. 

DETROIT, MICH. 



1886. 



co^. 



printed by 

Leavenworth & Burr Publishing Company, 

publishers ok 

The American Horticulturist, 

detroit, mich. 






American ^0rtituIturaI M^ocittx}. 



OFFICE OF SECRETARY 



Greencastle, Indiana, October 4, 1886. 
The following report, made by the Committee appointed to consider the recommendations 
made by President Earle in his address before the American Horticultural Society at its recent 
meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, was unanimously adopted, and the address ordered published lor free 
distribution. It is hoped that through the dissemination of this able address great encouragement 
shall be given the cause of American Horticulture, which this Society is laboring to build up. 

Requests for copies of this address, accompanied by a two cent stamp for postage, should be 
addressed to the Secretary, as above; also any inquiries regarding membership in the Society, etc. 

W. H. RAGAN, 
Secretary American Horticulttiral Society. 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON PRESIDENT EARLES ADDRESS. 

There were several points in the President's address which the Committee deem of special 
importance and worthy of extended notice, and, perhaps, of further discussion by the Society: 

The establishment of a Bureau of Pomology in connection with the Department of Agriculture 
at Washington ; 

The creation of a commission of pomological experts, to investigate the fruits and culture of 
foreign countries, especially the interior regions of Europe and Asia, with the view of obtaining 
valuable products suited to the wants of this country ; 

The endowment of Experiment Stations in connection with all the Agricultural Colleges of 
the country ; 

The Forestry question. To call the attention of our people and their legislators to the over- 
shadowing importance of some practical method by which the conservation of our remaining 
forests may be attained and their destruction prevented ; and also to the need of some uniform 
system of planting for the future ; 

The devising of some practical mode for the better and more equal distribution of our fruit 
crop to all parts of the country. 

In addition, the Committee, after due consultation, decided that the importance and value of 
the many good suggestions contained in the address would render' desirable the publication of not 
less than two thousand copies, in pamphlet form, for general distribution, to be sent to the leading 
horticultural papers of the country, and to such other persons as would be interested and benefitted 
thereby, thus creating additional interest in this Society and its work. Perhaps no better way could be 
devised for increasing the membership in the Society and inducing others to join m its good work, 
than through the dissemination of this address, which so ably sets forth its aims and objects, not 
only for the welfare of its members, but, as well, for the good of the whole country. 

Understanding that the financial condition of the Society would not warrant the undertaking 
of this work without some additional aid from its members, several of the Committee expressed a 
willingness to contribute for this worthy object from one to two dollars each, and it was believed 
that upon a proper presentation of the subject, other members would feel it both a privilege and- 
pleasure to aid the Secretary in carrying out the recommendations of the Committee for this pub- 
lication. Your Committee would therefore request that all who feel disposed to help in this 
matter, pay at once, for the use of Secretary Ragan, such sums as their liberality and the 
importance of the subject may suggest. Mr. Van Deman, having expressed a willingness to 
receive subscriptions for this purpose, your Committee would recommend that he be appointed a 
committee of one for this purpose, with such assistants as may be necessary to the successful 
carrying forward of this work. 

Geo. W. Cami'bell, of Ohio. Chas. A. Green, of New^ York. 

Prof. James Troop, of Indiana. J. Van Lindley. of North Carolina. 

Prof. H. E. Van Deman, of Kansas. E. T. Hollister, of Missouri. 

Dr. H. E. McKay, of Mississippi. W. P. Misler, of Illinois. 

Frank H. Leavenworth, of Michigan. Tuisco Grenier, of New Jersey. 

Committee. 



PRESIDENT BARLE'S ADDRESS. 



Ladies and Gentlemen — Members of the American Horticultural Society: 

It is with much pleasure that I greet you to-day in this seventh meeting of our Society in the 
enterprising, hospitable and beautiful city of Cleveland. We are glad to meet a second time in 
the great State of Ohio — a State which is ^feat in all the industrial interests of the time, great in 
agriculture, and great in horticulture. And we are especially glad to shake hands in this city so 
happily planted on the shores of an inland sea, with its grand environment of vineyards and orch- 
ards and gardens. For wonderful as has been the growth of Cleveland as a manufacturing and 
commercial city, its horticultural interests have kept even pace, until it has become famous as the 
centre of a rapidly-expanding garden industry, and celebrated the world over for the almost unrivalled 
beauty of some of its streets, which illustrate so well the possibilities of horticultural adornment 
in America. We meet in a town full of enterprise, full of intelligence, full of culture, and full of 
horticulture. 

Our last meeting was held close by the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, in a city abounding in 
semi-tropical luxuriance and perpetual vernal beauty, in connection with the most extensive and 
most comprehensive exhibition of horticultural products ever made in the world — an exhibition 
which we had created— and surrounded by all the vast appliances of that greatest of industrial 
exhibitions — the World's Exposition in New Orleans. From the protracted labors— for so many 
of us— connected with that exhibition we have taken a long respite, and can now calmly review 
that work of many months, and estimate its value. And now as I look back upon that exhibition 
across a distance of eighteen months, with its fifty thousand plates of fruit gathered from over 
fifty States and nations, from all the climates of the world and all the seasons of the year; with its 
ten thousand transplanted forest, fruit and ornamental trees representing eight hundred species ; 
with its strange flora from tropic wildernesses and sterile deserts mingling with the cultivated 
plants of Europe, Asia and America, I re-assert my belief that you who shared in this great 
labor, and all horticulturists who witnessed its results, will join in the opinion that the work which 
this Society did in organizing the International Exhibition of Horticulture at New Orleans consti- 
tuted the most notable horticultural event of modern times. 

This Society was first organized to meet the wants of the fruit-growers, gardeners, forest 
growers and lovers of rural art in the States of the Mississippi Valley. But horticulturists from 
most of the States of the East and of the West soon came to us for membership, and they asked 
us to extend our territorial limits to embrace all of the horticultural interests of the continent, from 
ocean to ocean. After much deliberation this was done at our large meeting in New Orleans, so 
that we are now in name, as we had been for years before in membership and in the spirit of our 
work, an American Society. 

At one of our earlier meetings a good friend and eminent worker for horticulture asked in a 
somewhat critical spirit " what excuse the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society had to give for 
its existence." I believe, gentlemen, that the excuse has been rendered, informally, but sufficient 



in itself to answer our friend. It is quite possible that this same earnest and excellent questioner, 
or some other one, has asked, or may ask us again, what reason we have for being a National, or 
rather an American Society of horticulture. Let us hope that the future work of the Society will 
fully justify its being here, with its great name, bearing the flags of two Nations in its hands. 

The need for, and the possible usefulness of large, far reaching societies is very apparent. The 
reason is of the same kind, but larger, as the reason for the existence of any societies at all. Soci- 
eties bring people together for the comparison of views, and the enlargment of views. The local 
society gathers and formulates the experience and wisdom of the community. The county and 
district associations have their larger important work. The State societies stimulate and organize 
and give direction and tone to the civilizing work of horticulture in whole commonwealths, and 
great States feel and exhibit the ennobling results of society action. There is scarcely a State in 
our Union whose whole industrial development, whose entire civilization to-day does not show the 
deep imprint of organized horticultural activity. It is seen in bending orchards, in burdened vine- 
yards, and in fruitful gardens. It hangs banners in every park of town or city, and sings paeans in 
groves and forests planted by man or saved from the woodman's axe. It babbles in fountains 
built and in brooks preserved, and its beauty shines on ten thousand green and shaded lawns, and 
in every window where flowers bloom and vines clamber. If you could take out the influences of 
horticulture from the structure of our civilization, you would have left a system of bare walls, 
hard forms, and coarse living, in whose presence we should be strangers as in an unknown world. 

But should the beneficent results of horticultural organization stop with State lines ? As long 
as our interests and our needs reach out in all directions through the land ; as long as our lines of 
commercial interchange, for the products of horticulture, as well as for the yields of the loom, the 
fruits of the forge, and the creations of the brain run in all ways across the continent, from the 
sea to the sea, and from the tropics to the frozen zone, will societies which bring us into larger 
acquaintanceships, which inform us of larger conditions, which stimulate us with new inventions, 
which tempt us with new successes, and which in every way enlarge the horizon of our intelligence, 
be found useful and more indispensable to the horticulturist, as to the man engaged in any great 
work. 

We are constantly dealing with new factors in horticulture. We have new avenues of 
exchange; we have new plants, new flowers, new fruits; we have new diseases, new insect enemies, 
new surprises of climate ; we find new adaptations for old things, and our old plans broadening 
out into a hundred new channels. All these ever-varying and ever-enlarging conditions of our 
old institution of horticulture, challenge us all who would be live men in managing horticulture as 
a business, or its successful apostles as a refining social power, to adopt every agency for the 
enlargement of our knowledge of the facts surrounding us, and of the wider relations to which 
our interests extend. There is perhaps within our reach no single agency which does so much to 
quicken investigation, to bring into public view the results of individual research, and so to 
enlarge the realm of our knowledge, as the organized societies of the time. This is true in every 
field of moral, social, or scientific work. It is no less true in the domain of horticulture. Horti- 
cultural societies have made horticulturists, and have made horticultural literature. 

Horticulture in the larger definitions which men give the term, covers a wide field. It has out- 
grown the restricted definition which confined it to the cultivation of a garden. For as Lord Bacon 
has defined gardening to be "the art which doth mend nature," the modern horticulturist has 
taken for his task all of the sciences and arts which relate to the garden, the orchard, the vineyard, 
and to the forest which stands behind and protects all these. The word relates to all that embel- 
lishes the home, the farm, the public highway or public park ; and to all that affects the great 
industries springing from vineyard, garden and orchard. There are great, noble, and most useful 



societies of the broadest scope devoted to each of the specialties which together make up the sys- 
tem of horticulture. These societies embrace many of the most noted and most noble workers 
of our time. But as all of these special interests interlace and overlap each other there should be 
some ground common to all of them, where all may mingle and in many ways do each other good. 
That common ground is the horticultural society whose sympathies reach out and embrace them all. 

Stated in a general way horticulture has its aesthetic side and its economic side. Which has 
been developing the most rapidly in the last quarter of a century it would be hard to say. But 
both of these branches have had an unfolding in this country that is quite unparalleled, and 
would seem marvelous if we did not live in the necromantic age of steam and electricity. We 
older people remember how bare and lean were the surroundings of ninty-five per cent, of American 
rural homes thirty or forty years ago ; how their unshaded and weather-beaten sides met all the 
assaults of the sun and the shock of storms without the intervention of screen or tree, and how if 
there was a bed of flowers about it was bashfully hidden in some corner as if afraid of getting 
in someone's way — save only the unblushing hollyhocks which in solid phalanx near the front door 
sometimes defied all rebuke ! 

If you travel over New England, or the middle States, or the broad plains of the West to-day, 
and count the thousands of mansions, villas, and cottages, in suburbs, in towns and on farms, 
which are embowered in shade and sheltered from winds, with bright lawns and blooming flower 
beds around them ; if you will consider the sheltering roadside maples, the shaded school-house 
grounds, the hundreds of handsome parks ; and how everywhere the love of beauty in the soul of 
man and woman is in full blossom in tree and plajit, in lawn and architecture, you will be certain 
that the aesthetic side of our horticultural education has been advancing at a wonderful rate. And 
this is the side of it that is undoubtedly of the most importance to the interests of the people ; for 
far more is it essential that the love and longing for beauty in the hearts of men be stimulated and 
gratified, than that we should have great variety on our tables, or profits from orchard or garden 
in our pockets. 

On the aesthetic side, horticulture allies itself with all the good influences which elevate the 
race. It co-operates with education, with art, with moral culture, with religion in expanding 
whatever is pure and best in human nature. On its economic side it is growing into some of the 
large industries of the time. Consider what a business the culture of flowers has become within 
a generation. The commerce in cut-flowers alone amounts to millions of dollars annually in some 
of our great cities. And flower culture as a business is growing rapidly in all of our American 
cities. Large capital is invested in it, and tens of thousands of persons earn their daily bread in 
producing and vending products which minister chiefly to the sense of beauty. 

A history of the nursery business in this country would be full of surprises. Think of the days 
when that quaint missionary of horticulture and religion, "Johnny Apple Seed," wandered through 
the wilderness of Ohio, scattering benedictions from his generous pockets. He was a veritable 
prophet of the great nurseries and orchards of to-day. He is perhaps the most romantic figure in 
horticultural history. We only know him under the odd soubriquet which the rustic speech of that 
day gave him — but that name should be mentioned with reverence among the benefactors of the 
West. And the horticultural State of Ohio, whose orchard products have been estimated at ten 
millions of dollars of annual value, would do herself honor by somewhere building a suitable 
monument to the memory of one who, while he was scattering fragments of religious books among 
the pioneers of a new land, planted apple seeds in every favoring spot, 

A half century since, how few and small were the American nurseries, while now the great 
nurseries are numbered almost by the hundred, and the small ones no man has counted. And 
each one is fostering the infant stages of landscape and floral beauty, and the germs of golden 



8 

orchard harvests in the future, or of forests that shall shelter and protect a needy land. The 
business of the nurseryman has become one of great magnitude and commercial importance, and 
upon its continued growth and prosperity depends much of the happiness, the civilization, and the 
future glory of the Amferican States. All honor and profit to the energetic men who have built 
up this noble business, and who are making this happy country of ours the most fruitful and the 
most flowerful of any land under the sun. 

Perhaps no industrial expansion of the time shows more remarkable results than the business 
of American fruit culture. A single generation has witnessed a revolution in the habits of living of 
the American people. The rare luxuries of thirty yeai-s ago have become the everyday necessities 
of American tables, and the health-giving and refining influences of general and abundant fruit 
supplies are working their noticeable effect upon the physique and character of the nation. 

Thirty years ago the daily receipts of strawberries in the city of Chicago — now the second 
greatest fruit market in the world — could all have been carried in one wagon at one load, and it 
would not have been a large load either. Now whole railway trains are engaged to carry the daily 
supply of that market, which often amounts to three hundred tons, and sometimes to twice that 
quantity. A similar increase of supply has taken place in most of the markets of the country. 
The production of the Wilson strawberry was the beginning of a new era in strawberry .culture 
and I may add, of small fruit gardening; for all branches of the business have been stimulated 
and carried along by the tide of enthusiasm which has planted strav^45erry fields all over the conti- 
nent, and covered the tables of the rich and of the poor alike, with their dishes of fragrance and 
crimson beauty. Thirty or forty years ago it would be safe to say that all the strawberries mar- 
keted in one day in the United States could have been gathered by a force no larger than I have 
seen bending over the smiling rows of a single plantation. Now there are probably not less than 
a quarter of a million harvesters engaged in gathering this delightful fruit for market growers. 
Then the season of this fruit was limited to the three or four weeks of its ripening in each locality ; 
now by the help of railways and refrigerator transportation it extends over four or five months of 
the spring and summer; and strawberries are sometimes transported a distance equal to that from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific seas. 

Thirty years ago, the supply of peaches for that same wonderful fruit market of Chicago 
nearly all came from one orchard, and that not a large one. That orchard has long since died, 
and its successors have grown and borne and died; but it now takes contributions from all the 
orchards of the South and West, and on the shores of the great lakes ; from the fruitful Delaware 
peninsula, and from the distant valleys of California, to supply the Chicago market and its depen- 
dencies with this one most delicious fruit of summer. 

How much more than a generation since was it that the principal vineyards of this country 
clung along a few miles of bluff on the Ohio river.' There was then no good grape which the 
people generally could grow. But a great want brought its remedy, as it often does. The occa- 
sion brought the man. . The man lived in classic Concord, where so many good and wise men 
have lived. For there, a sagacious, patient experimenter produced from the native wildings of 
Massachusetts that most valuable grape for the millions, the magnificent Concord, May perennial 
honors crown the good, grey head of the producer of the Concord grape, and of all such unselfish 
benefactors of the race. For millions of people now eat grapes grown on their own vines that 
could not have done so but for such a labor. With the introduction of the Concord a new era in 
grape growing was begun. Concord vines were planted in the East and in the West; in the 
extreme South and in the extreme North. Farmers and villagers, and the crowded denizens of 
cities planted grape vines ; they not only planted the vines, but they gathered the shining clusters 
of fruit, in town and country, on hillside and plain, all over this broad land. Stimulated by this 
great success a hundred others have produced good grapes of every complexion, variety and qual- 



ity under the sun ; and there is no locality so bleak or so barren but can select one or more varieties 
of Annerican grapes which will flourish under its peculiar conditions. So good grapes can, with a 
little simple care, be everywhere grown, in all the States and territories and provinces of the con- 
tinent, and by every person who owns a rod of land— good, ripe, sweet, beautiful grapes that shall 
gladden every home. 

And so, by the persistence and devotion of horticulturists this great land has become full of 
fruits. They are everywhere, at all seasons, and within the reach of all. Few tables need go 
without them and few mouths hunger long for them, for they have become cheaper than bread 
and meat in most of our markets. 

And yet it takes toil and skill, and the patient attack of many difificulties to produce good fruits, 
and to make them abundant. It seems to have been determined by Providence that the conquests 
of man over nature may become very complete, but that the varied labor of these conquests shall 
develop and educate every faculty of the man himself. We cannot reap the golden harvest of 
orchard and vineyard without we have been found worthy in the patient labor and skill with 
which we have met and overcome the endless difficulties which hedge them round. For success- 
ful horticulture illustrates anew the old " irrepressible conflict " between good and evil. Very 
luckily for the general good, the pursuit of our art carries with it a certain fascination for its devo- 
tees — it generates an enthusiasm which pushes its followers along over every frowning difficulty, 
until the amount of our accomplishment is sometimes greater than we desire, or than is profitable 
to ourselves. Many as are the enemies to conquer in every line of horticultural effort — and some- 
times it seems as if all the forces of nature were combining against our success, when insects 
deface and blights wither and drouths burn and frosts destroy — yet the ingenuity, the energy, the 
enthusiasm of the horticultural producer are found sufficient in most cases to overcome all obstacles 
so far as to provide enough, and too much. In fact the difficulties of production have been so far 
overcome that most branches of the business seem to be suffering from <w^r-production. 

Looking at this question from the standpoint of a commercial grower of fruits, it appears to me 
that one of the chief problems for our fraternity to solve is how to distribute our products more 
perfectly —how to reach wider markets. This involves superior methods of handling and packing, 
and superior means of transportation. There is, as yet, no absolute over-production of good 
fruits ; but there is defective distribution. There were not too many apples grown in New York 
and Michigan and Missouri last year, although apples sold in many of our large markets for prices 
far below the possibilities of profit ; but our system of distribution left half of the families in 
America with few or no apples to eat all of last winter. When one or more barrels of apples go 
into each farm house and laborer's cottage all over the South, to each miner's cabin among the 
mountains, and to all the new homes building on the wide plains of the West, the supply of apples 
will not be found too large. There have not been too many oranges grown in Florida and Califor- 
nia for the last few years, though many orange growers have got little profit from their crops; for 
three quarters of the people within a practicable commercial distance of these orange orchards 
have eaten almost no oranges in these years. If all the American people were to eat apples and 
oranges daily in their season, the quantity produced would not supply their wants. A more 
thorough system of distribution with the improved transportation facilities now at command will 
render this approximately possible. There is no fruit produced in our country so tender or per- 
ishable but that it can be carried and marketed half way, if not all the way across the continent, 
when the best facilities are used ; while our most important fruits can successfully be placed in 
the great markets of Europe. 

Hence it appears to me that we are not producing too much, but are marketing too poorly, 
and that the question of the distribution of our horticultural products is the one most important to 



the commercial grower. Its successful solution will result in infinite benefits to the people who 
consume, and in living profits to the often-discouraged class who produce. This problem, 
together with those relating to the difficulties of production, will keep every fruit-grower wide 
awake and on the alert, who attempts with some spirit to master the business which he has 
adopted. There is no obstacle in the way which energy — intelligent energy — cannot overcome, 
and I confidently expect to see the schemes of distribution, preservation, and marketing now in 
progress so far perfected that every worthy fruit-grower will be constantly challenged by the pro- 
fits within his reach to do better work and to master the difficulties of his situation. 

It is with much pleasure that I recognize the improved relations between the horticultural 
fraternity and that department of the general Government which touches our immediate interests. 
It was with peculiar satisfaction that I saw the present administration call to its aid, in the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, a leading member and founder of our own Society — a gentleman of such eminent 
abiHtyand knowledge in all lines of agriculture and horticulture, and one possessed of such enthu- 
siasm for all good work — as is our distinguished friend, the Commissioner of Agriculture. Gov- 
ernor Colman's work in the department demonstrates, what we all believe of him, his eminent fit- 
ness for the office. And what he has done shows that he does not forget any of the interests of 
horticulture. He is originating new methods of helping our cause, and he asks his old friends 
for such suggestions as he can make useful. It seems to me a fortunate time for us to ask the 
aid of the Government for certain important matters which cannot be accomplished without its 
powerful assistance. Now, while we have a " friend at court," of whose sympathy and influence 
we are sure, it is a favorable occasion for us to consider these questions. 

A good beginning has been made in the creation of a Division of Pomology by an act of the 
last Congress, but no sufficient provision was made for its establishment upon a comprehensive 
working basis. It is evident that the extent of the useful work which such a bureau could do 
was never considered by Congress, as but little can be accomplished with the small sum appropri- 
ated. In a country whose annual production of fruits exceeds a hundred million dollars of value, 
the helpful work which such a bureau could do would abundantly justify a liberal expenditure for 
its maintenance. For instance, the establishment of a system ol fruit crop reports, covering 
our whole territory, to be tabulated and sent out monthly, or oftener, would have exceeding 
value for all fruit-growers, and for all who are commercially interested in our pomological har- 
vests. We have long needed such a system of reporting. It is almost indispensable to any intel- 
ligent handling of the crops we grow. But such a system cannot be established outside of a Gov- 
ernment bureau. This is but one of many useful services which a pomological bureau could ren- 
der, if it was well endowed and well directed. 

The establishment of Experiment Stations in connection with, or under the direction of our 
agricultural colleges, is another work, important alike to- every interest of both agriculture and 
horticulture, which the Governnjent should not longer delay the commencement of. An excellent 
bill covering these wants was before Congress last year, which I think had the general endorse- 
ment of our agricultural colleges and societies. What can we do to help this measure along ? 

We need a more thorough research than has yet been possible into the conditions surrounding 
successful fruit culture in Russia, China, and other inter-continental countries, whose severe cli- 
mates correspond to our own interior climates, which, as we know, prove disastrous to nearly all 
varieties of fruit originating in countries under the influence of the sea. The fruits of Central 
Russia have endured the test of centuries of winters and summers, worse perhaps, than our 
country can parallel, and they are grown in great quantities in a latitude six hundred miles far- 
ther north than that of Quebec. And there almost under the Arctic Circle, has been building up 
through hundreds of bitter winters and arid summers a race of fruits, from which all weakness has 
been bred out, the fittest qualities only surviving. If these varieties are not all, or many of them. 



1 1 

as good in quality as our modern tastes demand, they at least will furnish the foundation for new 
and hardier races of fruits that will withstand the trying climatic vicissitudes covering half of 
this continent, under which our older varieties cannot be successfully grown. Is there any pomo- 
logical question more important than this ? We want to know more about Russian and Asiatic 
fruit culture. We want to know all about it that years of investigation, by a competent commission, 
can secure. This is certainly a work for the Government to undertake. The work has been nobly 
begun by the enterprise of two honored pomologists, whose labors can not be too highly com- 
mended ; for Mr. Gibb and Prof. Budd have already given the country a service which entitles them 
to great honors. The Government should take up and complete their work. 

But the most important subject to which we can call the attention of the Government is the 
work of forestry. This is the one grand question that overtops all other questions of public econ- 
omy to-day. The rapid destruction of the vast forest areas of this continent has unbalanced the 
forces of nature. Our seasons have changed their temperate courses. Destructive floods are 
followed by consuming drouths. Our crops become more uncertain. Our climate becomes full of 
extremes. The situation is one that challenges the attention of every thoughtful man, and that 
every year of timber waste makes worse. The forests of Europe, so far as saved at all, have been 
largely preserved and built up by the strong arm of the Government. And we must look to the 
.State Governments and to the National Government for the saving and the upbuilding of our for- 
est interests. What woodlands we have should be preserved by absolute force where the Govern- 
ment has the right, and by all encouraging legislation where it has no control. And by every poss- 
ible measure. State and National, should forest planting be encouraged. There are very few if any 
of the states but what have passed the limit of .safety in the work of deforestation. I cannot here 
argue this question at length, but a single fact will illustrate the imminent necessity for action. 
This State of Ohio where we meet to-day. in 1853 had 54 per cent, of its surface covered with forest. 
In 1884, but 17 per cent, of the area remained in timber. Thus in a single generation two-thirds 
of all the forest in existence at the beginning of the period had been destroyed, and but one-sixth 
of the surface of the State is now protected by the garments with which God covered these hills 
and plains. 

Do you wonder that the valley of the Ohio is almost annually desolated by inundation ? That 
climates change, and always for the worse.' That winters are harder, and summers hotter, and 
drouths more destructive ? Do you wonder that there are no more sparkling brooks that run and 
sing all summer, but only muddy torrents, and the dried up beds of streams.? The great conser- 
vative equalizing power of the forest is gone. The State of Ohio would seem to be making hasty 
strides towards the agricultural condition of Arabia. And Ohio stands for America. I quail before 
the inexorable penalties which nature has in store for all states and peoples who will ruthlessly 
destroy so glorious a heritage of forest as the American people once possessed. Without forests no 
successful agriculture is possible, and no high civilization can be maintained. It surely becomes 
the duty of every intelligent citizen to use all available influences through state and national legis- 
lation, and by the diffusion of light among the people, to save what remains of our American wood- 
lands, and to grow new forests over the vast treeless plains where they are both an economic 
necessity, and an indispensable factor of a profitable agriculture. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



002 762 750 ft 



